There are more shades of darkness than of light--ashy evenings, moonless, muffled by clouds.The cold blue of December, sharp and bright.Then there’s the absolute pitch of hurtling, sleepless,through night on a fast train, an absencethat makes us seek with all our stymied sensesthe something we suspect is there,a suggestive blankness evoking death,or what we think we know of it,reminding us of other lives we’ve hadbut then forgotten, other deaths.We lose them, except in snatches,like old songs. Darkness framed in lightburning just there, around the edges.This tunnel must resemble death, exceptwe will remember how it felt to be inside itwhen we emerge into the light of the other side.

Robbi Nester

Robbi Nester is the author of an ekphrastic chapbook titled Balance (White Violet, 2012) and other poetry collections. Her work has been published widely in journals and anthologies, including Cimarron Review, Broadsided, Silver Birch Press, Poemeleon, and Inlandia.

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